Math

= = = Mathematics!= =By Angela Tepedino=
 * Teaching mathmatics to elementary school children is not always easy. In today's society, there are so many different resources you can use to help improve your teaching style. Here you will find different links to web sites and technology that can help you make teaching mathmatics to elementary school level students easy and fun!**

=**Online Games** =
 * A lot of times, traditional mathematics teaching such as standing up in front of the blackboard and writing numbers can be boring and loose the attention of the children. Online games can help break up the never ending lectures, and the students have fun without even realizing that they are learning. Wether you set this up as a station for individual use or do it as a whole class, educational online games can be exciting for children at the elementary school age. Thewebsite called [|CoolMath4kids] is a great resource for fun online games dealing with math at the elementary level.**

=**Work Sheets** =
 * [[image:happyapples/cafe.jpg align="left"]]A lot of times it is hard to find work sheets that cover the exact material you would like and it is a pain to create your own on the computer with a word processor. Although some text books and work books come with worksheets for the material covered, they might not include everything you would like or they include problems that you do not want. The website [|Math Fact Cafe] is a terrific tool to create work sheets for all different ypes of math for whatever level you need. You can select pre-made sheets or build your own along with generators for math drills and flash cards. It is very user friendly and it lets you customize your work sheets with many different options including if you want to add work space for the students to do scratch work on.**

=**Virtual Manipulatives **= = = = = = = = = = = =**Applications** = = = = =
 * The hand held manipulatives are great for children to do hands on exploring with mathematical concepts. Sometimes it is hard to teach the entire class about them with such small objects, especially if each student does not have his or her own set. Virtual manipulatives sites are the best tool to use to help get your entire class involved when teaching with manipulatives. The website called the [|National Library of Virtual Manipulatives]has all different types of manipulatives and charts that can help assist in the lesson you are teaching. You do not need to download it like it states at the top of the page. Just choose the grade level and math concept you are teaching and it will give a list of links to the virtual manipulatives to choose from.**
 * [[image:happyapples/rocketmath.jpg width="88" height="135" align="left"]]With today's new technology, apps for your iPad, iPone or iPod have taken our society by storm. So why not take advantage of this great product to help enhance your lessons. Apps are fun and easy ways for children to practice their math skills without r[[image:happyapples/mathpuppy.jpg width="88" height="135" align="right"]]ealizing they are actually learning. Even if you do not want to use these in the actual class room, you could recommend these apps to the parents to download at home for children to gain extra practice. There are hundreds of apps for elementary school math and a lot of them are FREE! Two, free apps that I found to be great for children are called Rocket Math and Math Puppy: Bingo and Math Challenge for kids. In Rocket Math, the user used the default rocket ship to help solve different math missions and earn money points. These points can then be used to create your own rocket ship to play with. This app is available in a full version for $.99. It comes with those same features but also includes 56 different missions and categories for the student to do. For Math Puppy the user is able to pick a puppy avatar and play bingo or a math challenge. There are 3 different levels on this app to help the child advance and become an "expert". Both apps are highly recommended for children who are having difficulties in math.**

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=**Social Networking** =
 * Need help finding fun things to incorporate in your math lesson plans? Or how about if you already have a lesson plan made that you are really proud of, want to share it with other teachers? Social networking is no longer just for keeping touch with friends and relatives. With the advances in technology, people have been using these social networking sites to share their ideas with others. The most common social networking site to share ideas for lesson [[image:happyapples/Twitter-Logo-300x293.jpg width="106" height="99" align="left"]]plans and teaching techniques is [|Twitter]. After you create an account, browse around and find other educators who are interested in the same topic, mathematics. Read over their posts and find the ones you like the best. You can begin to "follow" them and read their ideas that they shared about different teaching methods that worked for their classes. Try one of them in your own classroom and post feedback to others. After getting used to using Twitter, you can start posting your own ideas for teaching math in elementary school and gain your own followers who will respond to your ideas!**

=Video Blogs =
 * With elementary mathematics, a student needs to continually pay attention to the lesson in order to successfully do the math problems because most of them do not have much previously knowledge about the subject. In elementary school classrooms, the student's mentality level varies. You may have some students who learn slower than others or students who naturally pick up the material faster than others. Another problem might be that one of your students is absent and misses an important lesson. A great way to keep students on track, without holding the rest of the class back, is by creating a video blog. By using any video camera or recording device that allows you to upload videos to the computer, you can post a daily blog with a video explaining that days lesson. This way, students who did not completely understand the material or missed out on that class, are able to access the video blog at home. This is great for mathematics because you not only can explain the lesson in text but also through verbal and visual ways. You do not even have to feature your face in the video. You can adjust the camera to record your hand writing out the math material and as you do so, speak loudly so the camera will record your voice, as well. Two easy-to-use and free blog sites are wikispaces and [|edublogs]. Both sites will require you to create a login account. After that, you can create different blogs for each day and present the material necessary for children to catch up or review the lessons in class. This will also help parents assist their children in doing homework. Because of advances in our educational system, math is different than when most parents went to school. Therefore, many parents may not be able to help their child with the homework because they do not understand the material themselves. With the video blog, parents can review the lesson, as well, and help their child complete assignments.**

=**Flash Cards** =
 * Sometimes children learn better with flash cards. You can easily create your own, printable flashcards with a [|flashcard generator]. By making your own cards, you can control what types of problems you present to your [[image:happyapples/using-flash-cards-math.gif width="110" height="84" align="left"]]class. Also, there are online games that include flashcards. These can be played by an individual student or as a class. The web site [|FACT MONSTER] has a great game that deals with flashcards. You can pick the level and type of math you want on your flash cards. A great idea is to make this an assignment for your students to create their own flash cards. This will help students understand math in a more abstract way. By letting them come up with the problems, they need to think in different ways than just solving a problem that is given to them. Afterwards, the students can use their cards to study for tests.**

=**‍‍‍‍‍‍‍Response Clickers ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍**=
 * Being fairly new, this new technology is a must have in the classroom. Each student gets his or her own hand [[image:happyapples/SmartResponse.jpg width="114" height="165" align="right"]]held response clicker with a number. Each clicker has different buttons including letters for multiple choice questions. These devices are wirelessly connected to a computer and a special program. In the program, you can create a bunch of multiple choice problems for the students to solve. Using the program and a smart board, you can display each problem on the board at the front of the class for the students to read. From their seats, students can work on the problem and when they think they solved it, they use the clicker to send in their answer to the computer. The program keeps track of which students answered and which did not. After it shows that everyone has answered, you can reveal the answer and a bar graph of students' answers will be displayed. Then you can move on to the next question. The great thing about this is that the students do this completely anonymously. Because they have a number on their clicker, the students name never comes up on the screen if they got the wrong answer. This way, children do not need to be embarrassed to try to answer a question with fear that they will be incorrect. Also, for the teacher, the computer calculates how the students are doing. It makes it easy for teachers to keep track of the progress of their students. Of course, these tools cost money. School systems will not buy just any new technology unless they express a need for it. Talk to your technology department in your school district and explain why your classroom would benefit from these devices.**

=Interactive Whiteboards =
 * Interactive whiteboards, also known as SMARTBoards, are coming about in classrooms nationwide. This new technology is great for elementary school math because the actual board allows students to interact with the lesson along with having fun. Because these boards are touch screen and have endless amounts of tools to make a simple lesson become exciting for students, it is easier for a teacher to get the students to pay attention and get involved. On these boards you can create your own lesson plan or use one of the templates. For math, these interactive whiteboards have built in tools such as rulers and protractors to assist in your lessons. There are numerous websites that have premade lesson plans. You can either use those exact lesson plans or modify them to fit your class's needs. A couple great websites to get you started for this are [|SMART Exchange], [|Eduscapes], and [|Topmarks]. Of course, in order to create your lesson plans or access these templates for the interactive whiteboards you need to purchase the SMART software. If your school already has interactive whiteboards in the classrooms, they most likely have purchased this software on the school's computers. You can get a [|30-day free trial]to create your plans at home.**

=Educational videos and songs =
 * Some students learn better when they can visualize a concept or memorize a catchy song about the topic. Because of the internet, it is so easy t[[image:happyapples/mathsong.gif width="94" height="91" align="left"]]o access fun mathematical videos and songs that can be shown in your classroom. This will help your stundent pay attention because it is more exciting than listening to a teacher talk and more interesting than doing worksheets. A great website for educational videos is [|TeacherTube]. This site has so many videos that can assit you in your lesson plans or just for you to get ideas on how to teach a certain topic. All you need to do is type in the lesson you would like and hundreds of videos will pop up. For catchy songs for remembering different math concepts, try the website [|MathStory] . At the top of the page you can choose to view math songs, poems, music videos and more.**